


Wolfskin

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 22:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12351948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: She falls asleep, Lady’s pelt around her shoulders. She dreams of Lady, of the woods, of a wolf like Nymeria, of a wolf, huge and wild and black as pitch, wheeling and turning in the courtyard at Winterfell, she dreams of a grey curled at Bran’s bedside, of one as white as snow, with eyes as red as blood watching over crows.When she wakes, for a moment, she can feel a wolf beneath her skin.





	Wolfskin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SecondStarOnTheLeft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/gifts).



> Happy birthday Niamh! I hope you like your present!

When they kill Lady, she is given her wolf’s pelt. She wonders if the Westerman knows what it means, when he sets the pelt into her hands. The wolves of Winterfell - the Starks and the Direwolves both - in the end, they all come home. In the crypts are buried every king of Winterfell, every Lord, every Stark of name. In other graves are buried the rest, are buried their ashes, back to the time when Night’s King tried to cloak the world in ice and the Starks stood against him, back when the Others of Ice stepped forth. 

The Others of Ice walk no more, the kings are but lords, the Starks, however, are still their wolves. The Starks always go home. The wolves go with them.

Lady has not been sent home. Lady, instead, has been sent to her.

The wolves of Winterfell howled their grief. Nymeria howled and fled, but her howls echoed still. Arya, at fault for this death, has raged an apology, made clear how unfair it is but not accepted her guilt yet.

Sansa’s fingers curl into Lady’s fur - cold, and dead, cold and dead as the winds of winter.

“Thank you,” she tells the Lannister’s man, the huge scar on his face raw and terrible even though it is so clearly healed. “You have done me a great kindness, Ser.”

 

* * *

 

She falls asleep, Lady’s pelt around her shoulders. She dreams of Lady, of the woods, of a wolf like Nymeria, of a wolf, huge and wild and black as pitch, wheeling and turning in the courtyard at Winterfell, she dreams of a grey curled at Bran’s bedside, of one as white as snow, with eyes as red as blood watching over crows. 

When she wakes, for a moment, she can feel a wolf beneath her skin.

 

* * *

 

Sansa has always been the southron daughter. Gentler, kinder, ladylike. The one who most resembles her Tully mother, the one drawn into the minstrel’s songs, the ballads of the bards.

Now, travelling south, she thinks not on where she is going, but from whence she came.

 

* * *

 

There are stories of wargs. There are stories of those who can walk from skin to skin, from mind to mind, greenseers sinking into the weirwoods until they could watch all of Westeros.

She does not know what she might be, southron daughter turning back towards the north, the soul of her dead wolf inside her.

Maybe, she thinks, Lady walked to her skin.

 

* * *

 

Her hearing gets better. Her sight, her sense of smell. Her sense of taste. She eats more meat, less lemoncakes. Turns from wine. The smell of it on the Queen makes her want to retch, when she looks at Joffrey across the green space between the tents she can hear his laughter and vile comments. When she looks at the Hound she can sense his anger, and she remembers what Father has always said of dogs - that they know when you are fearing or when you are angry, and respond.

She is not a dog, though. Her fingers curl around Lady’s pelt, still drawn around her shoulders even as the heat grows more and more stifling. She is not a dog, not a leashed hound waiting to be handed to a new master.

She is a wolf.

She answers to no one but herself.

 

* * *

 

She grows wilder, but carefully. She knows the rules: a wolf answers to herself, yes, but herself answers to the pack, and the pack… the pack answers to it’s mother and it’s father. She remains the lady she was born to be, even as the wolf grows within her skin. She fears it sometimes, fears how, as she sees Joffrey’s growing cruelty the anger of her wolf rises with her, like Nymeria’s biting teeth, wanting nothing more than to tear out of her, tear forwards, rip Joffrey’s sword from his hand, rip his hand from his arm-

She wakes in the night and can taste blood on her lips.

 

* * *

 

When Father says they must leave the wolf rises, the wolf revolts, the wolf… remains.

The wolf answers to herself, herself to the pack and the pack… the pack answers to Father.

 

* * *

 

Then they kill Father. 

 

* * *

 

Sansa runs, Sansa vomits. She can feel the silk and linen of her dresses against her skin, the finest cloth feeling ever so rough and she can’t,  _ she can’t _ , but the wolf is tearing in her belly, tearing in her hands and she barely sees the claws her hands have sprouted until she sees the cushion feathers falling around her.

 

* * *

 

The wolf is in her. The wolf is her. 

A wolf answers only to herself.

 

* * *

 

If she lets it be known what she is - some unnatural thing, some thing with magic - she is more than just the traitor’s daughter brought low, she is a  _ threat. _ She binds her wolf, she leashes it, she keeps herself from sniffing out the route Arya must have taken out of the city - she still dreams Nymeria, still dreams Bran’s wolf and Shaggydog and Greywind and Ghost and even the echoes of Lady, still remaining, she knows all her siblings yet live. 

The pack remains.

Sansa leashes herself, stands tall, holds Lady’s pelt around her shoulders. It is the first thing she throws from her when Joffrey’s men come to beat her, it is the first thing she grasps afterwards, to soothe the biting anger in her belly. Sansa hides herself behind pretty words, behind veils of silk over skin of porcelain over sinews and bones of steel.

Sansa plays the part expected of her, and holds her wolf leashed and ready.

 

* * *

 

The moon rises, round and full. The wolf, ever howling, howls louder.

Sansa makes her way from her tower down to the Godswood.

She knows the routes, the paths. She asked her maid how the servants got around unseen, has learned every hidden passage she might, found ten, found a score more. She slips down hallways and passages, down narrow tunnels, down gaps between walls and facades so thin she can hear the sinful sighs of pleasure the rooms inhabitants make as she passes.

She finds the weirwood.

She looks to the moon.

Her shoulders shift and warp, her dress tears, and fur sprouts through. Teeth are spat out, hard pearls of enamel, her eyes change until everything is black and white and grey as Winterfell, as home. Sansa-the-wolf rolls her shoulders, stretches out every crick, her muscles and bones taut and precise as the hidden danger of a reef just beneath the water.

Sansa runs.

Sansa-the-she-wolf is tireless. Sansa She-Wolf is strong. Sansa She-wolf runs the godswood of King’s Landing, all of fading summer’s heat stifling against her skin and cares not.

This is the one and the only way she may be free. The plants brush against her fur, in the dark and the light of the moon everything thrown into black and grey relief, the moon pale as milk above her.

She thinks of Winterfell. Of her siblings. Of the war she knows to be waging outside the walls.

She smells honesty on the Imp, lies on Baelish. Malice is all she smells from Joffrey and the queen. Margaery is mingled, all the marks of manipulation, cleverly done. Sansa wishes someone might be only honest, but the only one who is that was the Hound, and he was cruel in doing so, never kind as Father was.

Sansa She-Wolf runs, and Sansa She-Wolf thinks.

She knows: she cannot stay here. Already the servants speak of a great grey wolf haunting the grounds, huge and slavering, huge as a horse. They whisper it is the ghost of Ned Stark, returned as the sigil of his house, to take vengeance on those who unjustly killed him, who maltreat his daughter.

The rumours are spreading. Before long, they will wed her off, make a show of some false kindness to try to silence them.

Soon, someone will know of the wolf that lives within her skin.

 

* * *

 

“I know,” she says to Margaery, “that some part of you means well.”

In her belly, the wolf is pacing.

“I know,” she says to Margaery, “that some part of you wants me gone from here.”

She turns to Olenna, and Lady in her stomach is bristling. 

“I know you want Joffrey. You want Margaery to be Queen. I know you do not care how this happens.”

She is a wolf, she is the She-Wolf, Sansa Stark, Sansa She-Wolf. The longer she is here the less she feels a Stark, the more she feels a wolf. The longer she is here, the less her family may care from her, the more they must know her a hostage, must think of her such.

“You want me gone,” she says. “This is why you have been suggesting Willas.”

Her pack needs her safe. Her pack needs her gone from King’s Landing.  

“Get me gone,” she says. “Get me Willas.”

In the end, a wolf answers to herself, and to her pack.

“Get me gone,” Sansa says and shakes her head, curls her clawed fingers into her palms, “You may have the King.”

 

* * *

 

That night, a wolf rode for Highgarden.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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